Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Are you new to SharePoint development? Do you want to see how to create a custom web part?

Let me explain you from basic. Although there are many ways to create a web part but lets look at one way.

Following steps are involved in the creation of a custom web part:1. Creation of Web Part project.2. Creation of controls used in the web part.3. Loading the control as web part.4. Deploying the web part code in the SharePoint site.5. Adding the web part on the site page.

Let’s understand each step with the help of an example.

Step 1: Open Visual Studio and create a new blank solution as shown in figure. 1.

Figure.1Step 2: Add a new project of type web application under the newly created solution as shown in the figure.2 below.

Figure.2

Delete the existing class from it. Add a new web user control in this project and give some appropriate name to it as shown in figure. 3

Figure .3Code snippet for the user control and its code behind is given below:

Step 4: Go to the properties of the web part project and select the build output path to the bin folder of the web application virtual directory. Before compiling add reference of the web part control project to it.

Add a safe control entry (below the safe control entries which are already present) to the web.config file of the web application which is present inside the virtual directory.

Change the trust level to Full as shown below.

Step 5:Add Control to site:

Create a new folder within the virtual directory of the web application to store the user control. Give it a name such as UserControls.

Now go to Site Settings and click web parts as shown in the figure below

Figure.7Click on New Web parts. Select the web part we deployed and click populate gallery.

Figure.8

Go to the page on which you want to add the web part. Click the site settings àEdit Page as shown in the figure. 9 below.

Figure.9

Select the web part from the list of web parts. That’s it your web part is ready to play its role.

Figure.10

Figure.11

I hope this post will help many developers. If you still need more clarification please write to us at

I have been working with workflows for many months and I love to explore each and every thing with respect to workflow. I learn about different activities and different ways to create the workflows and much more other stuff that can be done in workflow. One of the good stuff to do with workflow is services. Services can be attached to the workflow runtime.

Every workflow has instance and there is always a workflow runtime which handles this workflow. There are many services available that can be attached to the workflow runtime.

Workflow has one primary service which is SqlTrackingService. There are two additional services are also available which are ConsoleTracking as well as SimpleFileTrackingService. But we are going to discuss SqlTrackingService.

First let me give you a highlight on this tracking. When your workflow gets started, an instance of it gets created and starts running. This instance then fires several events internally when activities get executed. If you want to capture all these details, you can do it with the help of tracking service. You can track other things also like your own custom tracking. Let’s say at the end of every activity or in between any activity you would like to make a cross mark saying that this and this part of activities have completed executing. Something like this is possible with the tracking service.

If you want to track your custom data, you will have to prepare Tracking profile which is nothing but an XML which shows that what data to capture and what not to capture.

So Bottom line is to track the actions taking place in workflow and actions that you want to track on your own can be achieved easily through tracking service. All you need to have is SqlServer and Tracking service to attach to workflow runtime.

All this information is stored in database. So once we have data in database, then it becomes easy to have query on them and to generate reports from them.

One big advantage of querying this tracking data is WF also comes with SQLTrackingQuery class built in with it. So just play with an object of this class and have some fun getting the answers of your query. So even no need to write specific SELECT Commands for this.

Built in tracking is actually divided in three parts.

(1) Activity tracking

Activity tracking allows you to track activity related events like activity cancellation, activity execution, and unhandled exceptions in activity etc. ActivityTrackingpoint and ActivityTrackingLocation object allows you to track all these.

User related all custom tracking that you would like to capture. Because user tracking is workflow to workflow specific.

If you closely look at this concept, this is very similar to tracing in ASP.NET where you have different severity levels and based on that what all information you want to capture can be traced at any point of time.

To really analyze data captured by service, WF also comes with the Tool called WorkflowMonitor. This is useful to see the execution of workflow as GUI. Where you come to know what all activities are done for specific instance and what all activities are pending to execute.

We will have a real fun in executing this service and then analyze the data captured by tracking service and using the Workflow Monitoring tool.

I will continue this article and in part 2 we will explore the tracking service practically.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Hi all,here is some chunks of that will help you out to iterate list item in SharePoint list using SharePoint web service. to parse all list items you should know XmlNameSpace from result xml schema,but here in this case I have remove that XmlNameSpace using Regx.so it is easy to iterate result xml schema.

Following example will fetch all list items from SharePoint list and show all title to console.

for better result copy the code and paste it in your console application add necessary assemblies,include SharePoint list.asmx webrefrence name this reference as "ListService".

//load xml from removed XmlNameSpace and short name of XmlNameSpace..XDocument xmlDoc = new XDocument();xmlDoc = XDocument.Parse(xmlResponse);

//iterate each row in sharepoint list.//in result xml each row is in element "row"var Items = from item in xmlDoc.XPathSelectElements("//row")select new{//get Title Field of SharePoint list...Title = Convert.ToString(item.Attribute("ows_Title").Value)};//display each item in title field in console..Array.ForEach(Items.ToArray(), item => Console.WriteLine(item.Title));Console.ReadLine();

}}}

give your comments on this post, for alternate approch to parse web service response using xpath see following article..

Friday, December 12, 2008

Deploying a workflow is one of the major concerns when you develop the workflow because developing the software or anything is only half job done. The other half is deploying the code and software that you have developed.

so here we look forward on how to deploy a workflow in moss.

I will give you here the brief idea about how exactly we can proceed to have a structure of workflow and finally what files are needed for workflow to deploy.

Here keep in mind that I am talking about the workflows developed using the Visual Studio. we are not talking about workflow designed by the Sharepoint Designer.

To start with, you should have a workflow dedicated project in which your entire workflow will reside.

Give name of the Project and then Create Folder Structure inside it just like shown below.

The above should be the structure where you can have your feature Files and related ASPX files if any like association and initiation pages for the workflow.

Now double click the workflow.xml and right click and select insert snippet and then Windows Sharepoint Service Workflow> and then workflow.XML Which will give you the complete XML which you are required to use.

Snippets give you the clear idea about the replacement of tokens that we have to make. So all the green tokens need to be replaced by appropriate values.

Replace Name with the name of the Workflow that you want to give.

ID must be unique GUID. Generate it from Visual Studio Tools>Create GUID option

Folder under feature and folder under layouts will have the same name.

Copy those folders and paste them in respective 12 hive folder. Give your assembly strong name and build your project. Place assembly in GAC.

Now your feature is ready for deployment.

Install the feature and activate that feature, so if your feature is installed at site level, you will find it at site collection administration or else you will find in the site administration under specific web. And if the feature is activated, you will find the workflow in Workflow Settings under document library and list.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Facing another web part error ? Wondering what to do when you receive the error Cannot deserialize the web part every where on the page ?

I have faced a similar situation and have found a solution for it. Solution is very simple ....

I am assuming that your wss is running under the Network Service Credentials. If that is the case and you have just restarted the server machine and started getting this error then follow these steps............

1. Go to the windows directory and find the TEMP folder e.g c:\windows\TEMP.

Right click the TEMP folder and select the security tab.

2. Click the add button for adding a new user. write the name network service and press check names. Give Read/Write rights and press OK.

3. Go to the location c:\windows\system32\Logfiles folder and follow the instructions given in step 2.

That's it. Refresh the page and the error is gone !!

If it is still troubling you . Write to us at sharepointkings@gmail.com with a screenshot of the error page (if possible). We will feel happy to help you as always.

Till now what we are doing was all without writing any code. Now let’s write a code. We may require this if we are not using the BDC Web parts to display the data from BDC Definition. It is like fetching record with the help of ADO.NET and displaying on grid or using the way you like.

So let’s get started.

Here we are going to design a console application to understand each class that is required to connect and methods that are required to access different entities for any application definition.

First I would like to list down the assemblies that we are going to use in this applications.

Here what I am doing is making the conditions because I have three definition installed in my machine and I want to give you an example of entities and methods I have all these ready in one of my definitions so I am making conditions. You can write code in your own way.

Ok, now what we will do is we will loop through every BDC Definition and print its name in console.

Now I am making condition of my own application, you can use your defined application. If you have used the XML that we have discussed so far in previous articles of BDC series, then this approach will be fine for you.

See, we wrote a code without using traditional ADO.Net Approach. This is the other way to get the data from BDC. The power here is that you can actually treat XML as a connection bridge for the database and code and then have flexibility to use it in your own way.

Ok, in this article we are going to discuss about the relations between the tables. We have relations in our table with primary key and foreign key concept in database. Here relationship in terms of BDC web parts with the keys.

So let’s jump in to practical to understand it better.

We will use the Same XML that we used in previous part 5. Always remember to keep using latest XML that we keep modify in each part one by one.

Before proceeding further we will change our XML now to include au_id primary key in this XML. So that we can use it for relation with other tables through XML as well.

We will take authors and titleauthors. Which authors has written what titles and royaltyper column from it. It is enough to see the scenario in action although may not sound logical.

Ok, you need to add one more Entity Type in our XML in <Entities> Tab.

<Entity EstimatedInstanceCount="20" Name="Title">

<Identifiers>

<Identifier Name="title_id" TypeName="System.String"/>

</Identifiers>

</Entity>

Now that once we have added this.

Go inside <Entity EstimatedInstanceCount="100" Name="Author">, we have <Methods> tab, go inside that and paste this code.

As you come to know here, what we did is we have used au_id as input paramter to the new destination, that is titleauthor table.

We want to display title_id and royaltyper columns in that new webpart which soon we are going to use on our page for the relation.

And finally then we have made the association between two entities for having parent child relationship.

Ok, now let’s go ahead and add one more web part on the page.

Edit the page, and add a web part named “Business Data Related List”.

Now modify the newly added web part and select AuthorTraders in Type selector. The moment you do this, we can come to know the relationship that we defined automatically selected in relationship dropdown in terms of AuthorToTitle.

Once, you have that webpart on your page, next step is to connect that web part with the parent one. So go ahead to the Author List web part, the main parent web part and connect it with the TitleList.

And see the magic. Select au_id from parent list and see both web parts will give you the result.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

With the request from the users we are here with another post for Enterprise Custom fields with project server (PWA).

We will go step by step to understand how custom field works in PWA or project server.

What is Enterprise Custom Fields?

In simple word Enterprise Custom Fields are useful for storing some extra value or parameter regarding the project.

That value can be useful for reporting or some kind of bifurcation or filtration or to indicating some value which is related to project for business but not in technical term.

You can say it’s a tag that we can give to any project.

How to Use Enterprise Custom Fields?

Let’s have an example:You are using project server as a repository to monitor all your projects in your organization.

Now suppose you have multiple clients and you are using only one instance of PWA or project server (and you should). So in this scenario your may have multiple project from multiple clients in same place now how to bifurcate which project is form which client.

At this moment you can use Enterprise custom Fields to store client name and use this as a filtration. This is the simplest example so that everyone can understand what is the use of this Custom Fields.

But in the real scenario this fields can be use in many-many other ways.

Types OF Use Enterprise Custom Fields

You can create Custom Fields against each project, against each Resource or against each task.So you can create Custom Field by project, Custom Field by Resource, Custom Field by task.

In addition to this i sometimes got this error message in the event viewer log as well. I developed a custom web part and deployed its dll's in the bin folder of the site. When i tried to add the webpart on a web part page i got the access denied error message. Somehow i could not figure out why i am getting the error message even though i am the administrator of the site and machine.

Then i studied the error message in detail. It was mentioned that error message is getting generated because the account under which the service is running is not having permission to access the bin folder of the site.

Then i simply went to the virtual directory folder of the site and clicked on the properties of the bin folder(Right Click --> Properties). I selected the security tab and found out that the account under which the wss services were running (Network Service Account) was not present at all.

I added the network service account and gave appropriate rights and that's it !!! Webpart started working....

I hope this blog post will reduce your headache to a cetain extent.

Still if you are facing problems like this and couldn't find solution contact sharepointkings@gmail.com and we will help you out.

This will add one more option in toolbar of the detailed view profile page. Let’s add one more Action in the toolbar. We used this query string because if you search in Live., you should know that this is the query string that is used for search in Live.

Add this tag inside <Actions></Actions> tag only. That means we will have two actions. Let’s this action search it from Google. So we use its Query string and pass our parameter.

Now as we are ready with our BDC, we can proceed and use this BDC in a list or document library. Go to any list or library and create column.

Ok, give the name of the column. I’ll give “Authors”.

And select type Business Data and select Authors definition as we did in our previous part. So as you do this, you will get the clear idea because now you have four columns available that we had in our XML. There is an option to select the selected column, let’s keep it address and press OK.

Now, when you will try to insert a record, just like people picker, it will give you an option to select the au_fname and city as we have these parameters in search in our BDC XML. As you see, when you search, you get result from database and it can be seen in the box.

Because we have kept the address column in display, it shows the address of that contact. If you want to see all the parameters that we have used in BDC just click on that arrow and click on View Profile.

See, you can see profile like this.

One very important thing to note. As you can see the refresh button available in the BDC column. This is given because once the data is changed in underlying database table, it will be fetched there directly and you can see the updated data there.

Have a look at the current value of Address.

Let's make a change in underlying datasource.

we are going to change in the address column, change to "New Adress".

And then go back to the list and hit the refresh button and see the change. It will give you one message in one page saying that it will update the datasource and it will take time and so on. just go ahead and press OK.

That’s it. Now explore the BDC in terms of Field in your own way. You will love it.

Read the above part1 to understand BDC concept, because many things in this part are in seqence. so before starting on part 2, i recommend you go through part 1 and then after reading part 2, you can readu further part of series.

Ok, let’s continue our discussion on BDC. Earlier in part 1, we discussed how single data can be returned based on query of au_fname.

Now we will change the query, so that we can enhance our example and expand it to return multiple result set.

Take the same XML that we have used in our first part, we will modify it.

One important thing to keep in mind that it is not available in standard edition of MOSS, for this facility you have to buy very expensive Enterprise edition of MOSS.

Any database record can be brought in to MOSS with the help of BDC. The main advantage of using BDC is that it is no code solution. By no code, I mean you do not need to write functions that uses the stored procedure to fetch the data, returns you data reader or dataset and then you use them to bind it to grid or loop through them and bind it to any source control.

Yes, here you need not to write any code for that. All you need to write is one XML file that will be the bottom line for BDC to execute. Yes, of course it needs practice to work on that XML, but once you are comfortable with it, then really it is an easy task.

Being XML in the background process of BDC, you can connect almost with every source of database. You can connect you SQL Server, Oracle, My SQL or most databases. You can then have a facility to make a search out of it that displays the result set in the grid form that is the built in form of BDC.

Here we have to use BDC web part to display the data being fetched and executed by XML.

So without talking much let’s dive into BDC first part to understand very basic concept of it.

Here we will take Pubs database of SQL Server as an example to understand BDC. Consider Authors table in it. We have au_fname column as a text field. We will create a BDC XML that will connect to SQL Server database and fetch the record from the search query from BDC web part and then web part display the result.Let’s start with the XML.

Now, you have to go to your central administration. Go there and go to your SSP created. There under Business Data Catalog section click on import application definition. Browse through your XML that we have just created, and import it.

When you import the application, if you find this message coming on the screen, ignore it for now. Else there is a problem with your XML, you need to correct it.

Once you are done with this, hit OK and come to a page where it shows a summary about your application that you have just uploaded.

Now open a page where you want to import this BDC web part. Open your site and click on edit this page. Add web part, search for Business Data List web part under Business Data Section of All Web parts. Once imported, click on tool pane.

And then search for your web part from there, and select the application that we had uploaded.

After importing it, it will look very similar to this.

Now query the data and you will see the result set.

When I worked with the BDC, I got in lot of troubles. I initially faced lot of problems because nothing was succeeding. Even my XML was right, at the last moment when I press retrieve data, it was giving me Error. Then I looked very carefully at XML then I realized that number of fields that you want to retrieve must be there in the type descriptor tag. Also keep in mind that if there are three fields in the query, you must have only three type descriptor in XML. This is my hard work. :)

So finally you have data in return.

This ends our first part. I will continue this with next part when we will achieve some more functionality.

Let’s continue our discussion for records management features. Here we will take up one of the very important feature of record management and that is Auditing.

Auditing enables you to capture several information regarding the items in the document library and content types like who made the change, what change and at what time. Who opened the document, viewed the document, view item properties, editing the items, moving and copying the items and much more.

It actually allows the administrator to have a log for each user’s actions that he took. Administrator can retrieve the entire history of all the actions performed by all users.

These all things need to capture in terms of generating the report at any point of time. Once we enable the auditing option, we will have to go to the top site level to administer all the changes and make the audit of your document library.

The main thing to understand is what all information is captured by the audit log. We know that we can audit for several actions but if we do not know what kind of information it gathers that it is of no use. So first let us understand that what kind of information that audit log actually stores.

(1) Item name and Location(2) Site from which that item change happened(3) Type of the item, is it a list item or is it a document library item(4) User ID for this event(5) Date and time, when it happened(6) Which action is actually taken on that item

These are the important parameters that log returns us and we need to analyze them.

But the most important thing to take in mind is auditing tells you that item is changed, it does not say anything about what is changed, so it should not be mislead with versioning of the item.

We will have an option from there to download the report of the audit. That report itself requires several practices to learn and understand what to read and how to read it. We also will see that once we generate report for each property.

Let’s start our practical tour to understand this feature in more detail.

Go to the document library. I am going to use my same document library which I used in my previous three posts. Go to Document Library Settings ->Information Management Policy feature->Define a Policy.

Select Enable auditing and check the first option as I am going to demonstrate you each option in it one by one. So for now check the first option which is Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists, or viewing item properties.

Before proceeding ahead I would like to introduce one more important thing is that apart from handling different auditing for individual items in document library, you can also audit some of the site level actions like editing content types and columns, search queries used to search the results, editing users and permission at site level. You can also keep track of these actions at a site level too.

Go to top level site action->site settings->modify all site settings->collection administration option-> under it site collection audit settings. But Make sure that this will enable auditing on each item on each list, so there is a maximum chance to run out of your disk space as it will potentially log large information.

Once, we have enabled it I created one document named it audit document and other users have updated its properties and viewed properties and afterwards I generated report from it and I got the following result. To view the report, go to site collection administration and under it view log report. Select content viewing report under first section titled “Content Activity Reports".

In the same way you can check for other items and check the log and analyze the data.

what is the difference between SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services?SharePoint Portal Server is the global portal offering features like global navigation and searching. Windows SharePoint Services is more content management based with document libraries and lists. You apply information to certain areas within your portal from Windows SharePoint Services or directly to portal areas.

what is a document library? A document library is where you upload your core documents. They consist of a row and column view with links to the documents. When the document is updated so is the link on your site. You can also track metadata on your documents. Metadata would consist of document properties.

what is a meeting workspace? A meeting workspace is a place to store information, attendees, and tasks related to a specific meeting.

what is a document workspace?Document workspaces consist of information surrounding a single or multiple documents.

what is a web part?Web parts consist of xml queries to full SharePoint lists or document libraries. You can also develop your own web parts and web part pages.

what is the difference between a document library and a form library? Document libraries consist of your core documents. An example would be a word document, excel, powerpoint, visio, pdf, etc… Form libraries consist of XML forms.

what is a web part zone?Web part zones are what your web parts reside in and help categorize your web parts when designing a page.

how is security managed in SharePoint?Security can be handled at the machine, domain, or sharepoint level.

how are web parts developed? Web parts are developed in Visual Studio .Net. VS.Net offers many web part and page templates and can also be downloaded from the Microsoft site.

what is a site definition? It’s a methods for providing prepackaged site and list content.

what is a template?A template is a pre-defined set of functions or settings that can be used over time. There are many templates within SharePoint, Site Templates, Document Templates, Document Library and List Templates.

how do you install web parts?Web Parts should be distributed as a .CAB (cabinet) file using the MSI Installer.

what is CAML? tands for Collaborative Application Markup Language and is an XML-based language that is used in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services to define sites and lists, including, for example, fields, views, or forms, but CAML is also used to define tables in the Windows SharePoint Services database during site provisioning.

what is a DWP? he file extension of a web part.

what is the GAC? Global Assembly Cache folder on the server hosting SharePoint. You place your assemblies there for web parts and services.

what are the differences between web part page gallery, site gallery, virtual server gallery and online gallery? Web Part Page Gallery is the default gallery that comes installed with SharePoint. Site Gallery is specific to one site. Virtual Server gallery is specific to that virtual server and online gallery are downloadable web parts from Microsoft.

what is the difference between a site and a web? The pages in a Web site generally cover one or more topics and are interconnected through hyperlinks. Most Web sites have a home page as their starting point. While a Web is simply a blank site with SharePoint functionality built in; meaning you have to create the site from the ground up.

What is Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services? How is it related to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Windows SharePoint Services is the solution that enables you to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services — a key piece of the information worker infrastructure delivered in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 — provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office system and other desktop applications, and it serves as a platform for application development.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 builds on top of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to provide additional capabilities including collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management, business process and forms, and business intelligence.

What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?

SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

What is Microsoft Windows Services?

Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers.is designed

What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.* Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications. * Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions. * Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized. * Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks. * Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code.

What is the difference between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

What suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system work with Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.

Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).

How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?

SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members' roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.

Can I post any kind of document?

You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.

Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?

No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.

How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?

It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.

Can I create custom templates?

Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor's office, lawyer's office etc.

How can I make my site public? By default, all sites are created private.

If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be:http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com

Hence, please take special care to name your site.These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace.Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.

The URLs for each will be, for example:* http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/finance* http://yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com/marketing

You can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while maintaining global access to the parent site.

How do I make my site non-restricted?

If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:# Login as an administrator# Click on site settings# Click on Go to Site Administration# Click on Manage anonymous access# Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:** Entire Web site** Lists and libraries** Nothing

Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access. The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.

Can I get domain name for my Web site?

Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don't offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.

What are picture libraries?

Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc

What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server?

* No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs * No software to download - ready to start from the word go* No IT resources - Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it* Faster deployment

Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?

Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.

Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?

No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.

I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?

No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.

Security levels are assigned by the administrator who is adding the user. There are four levels by default and additional levels can be composed as necessary.* Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.* Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.* Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.* Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.

How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.

Enter your search terms Submit search form Web megasolutions.net

What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?

An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on the Web, can only be accessed by people who are members of the network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator.

What is a workspace?

A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?

A user can be assigned one of the following roles* Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site.* Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists.* Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site.* Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.

Can more than one person use the same login?

If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.

How customizable is the user-to-user access?

User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.

Can each user have access to their own calendar?

Yes there are two ways to do this,* by creating a calendar for each user, or* by creating a calendar with a view for each user

How many files can I upload?

There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.

What types of files can I upload / post to the site?

The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.

Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?

SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.

Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?

This is possible via a custom application, but it not natively supported by SharePoint or SQL Server.

Can I customize my Windows SharePoint Services site?

YES! Windows SharePoint Services makes updating sites and their content from the browser easier then ever.

To fully customize your site, you can use Microsoft FrontPage 2003. Specifically, you can use FrontPage themes and shared borders, and also use FrontPage to create photo galleries and top ten lists, utilize standard usage reports, and integrate automatic Web content.

Will Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 run on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows?

Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.

Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.

What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?

The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.

Write the features of the search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007?

The search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been significantly enhanced by this release of SharePoint Products and Technologies. New features provide:* A consistent and familiar search experience.* Increased relevance of search results.* New functions to search for people and expertise.* Ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications and* Improved manageability and extensibility.

What are the benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

* Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience.* Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities.* Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content.* Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value.* Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems.* Connect people with information and expertise.* Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries.* Share business data without divulging sensitive information.* Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location.* Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

Will SharePoint Portal Server and Team Services ever merge?

The products will come together because they are both developed by the Office team.

What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?

If an assembly is installed into the BIN directory, the code must be ensured that provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause the Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears.

How can I raise the trust level for assemblies installed in the BIN directory?

Windows SharePoint Services can use any of the following three options from ASP.NET and the CLR to provide assemblies installed in the BIN directory with sufficient permissions. The following table outlines the implications and requirements for each option.

Option Pros Cons

Increase the trust level for the entire virtual server. For more information, see "Setting the trust level for a virtual server" Easy to implement.

In a development environment, increasing the trust level allows you to test an assembly with increased permissions while allowing you to recompile assemblies directly into the BIN directory without resetting IIS. This option is least secure.

This option affects all assemblies used by the virtual server.There is no guarantee the destination server has the required trust level. Therefore, Web Parts may not work once installed on the destination server.

Create a custom policy file for your assemblies. For more information, see "How do I create a custom policy file?" Recommended approach.

This option is most secure.

An assembly can operate with a unique policy that meets the minimum permission requirements for the assembly.

By creating a custom security policy, you can ensure the destination server can run your Web Parts.

Requires the most configuration of all three options.Install your assemblies in the GAC

Easy to implement. This grants Full trust to your assembly without affecting the trust level of assemblies installed in the BIN directory.

This option is less secure.

Assemblies installed in the GAC are available to all virtual servers and applications on a server running Windows SharePoint Services. This could represent a potential security risk as it potentially grants a higher level of permission to your assembly across a larger scope than necessary

In a development environment, you must reset IIS every time you recompile assemblies.

Licensing issues may arise due to the global availability of your assembly.

Does SharePoint work with NFS?

Yes and no. It can crawl documents on an NFS volume, but the sharepoint database or logs cannot be stored there.

How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?

Site Server has search capabilities but these are more advanced using SharePoint. SPS uses digital dashboard technology which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and showing them on dashboards (pages). SS doesn't have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be SPS document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.

What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?

A few suggestions:

# SPS and STS on same machine # Tree view of Categories and Folders # General Discussion Web Part # Personalization of Dashboards # Role Customization # Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval # More ways to customize the interface # Backup and restore an individual Workspaces # Filter for Visio # Better way to track activity on SPS

Why Sharepoint is not a viable solution for enterprise wide deployments?

Document management does not scale beyond a single server, but scales great within a single server. For example, a quad Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM works great for a document management server that has about 900,000 - 1,000,000 document, but if you need to store 50,000,000 document and want to have them all in one single workspace then it does not scale at all. If you need a scenario like this, you need to plan your deployment right and it should scale for you, it just does not right out of the box. If you are using your server as a portal and search server most for the most part it scales great. You can have many different servers crawl content sources and have separate servers searching and serving the content.

If you have < 750,000 documents per server and fewer than 4 content sources and fewer than 50,000 users, SPS should scale just fine for your needs with the proper planning.

What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?

SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint team Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

How Does SharePoint work?

The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

How do I open an older version of a document?

Normally, all previous versions are located in the shadow, so if you right click a published document from within the web folders, go to properties and then the third tab, versions you can view older versions.

If you want to do this in code: <pre>strURL = "url of the last published version" Set oVersion = New PKMCDO.KnowledgeVersion Set prmRs = oVersion.VersionHistory(strURL) Set oVersion = Nothing </pre>prmRS will contain a recordset, which contains the url to the old versions in the shadow.

Why do the workspace virtual directories show the error “stop sign” symbol in the IIS snap-in?

There are two, * microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver and * microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver.development.

What is SharePoint from a Technical Perspective?

Technically SharePoint illustrates neatly what Microsoft's .net strategy is all about: integrating Windows with the Web. Microsoft has previously made accessing stuff on a PC easier, (Windows) then on a network (NT) and now on the web (.NET). SharePoint is an application written to let a user access a web accessible directory tree called the Web Storage System.

SharePoint was written with a set of technologies that allow the programmer to pass data, functions, parameters over HTTP, the web's medium. These are XML, XSL and SOAP, to name a few I understand the basics of!

To the user it looks easy, like Hotmail, but every time they click a button or a link, a lot has to happen behind the scenes to do what they want to do quickly and powerfully. Not as easy as you might think, but SharePoint does it for you. Accessing this Web storage system and the server itself is also done using technologies like ADO, CDO, PKMCDO, LDAP, DDSC, ADSC. More on these later. SharePoint is a great example of how the Internet Platform can be extended and integrated into an existing well adopted technology, Windows.

What is SharePoint from an Administration Perspective?

Administering SharePoint mainly consists of setting it up, which is much easier than you expect, adding the content, which can be just dragging and dropping in whole directory structures and files, and then organizing the files better by giving them categories or other metadata. This is done either through the Web interface or through the SharePoint Client: a program what means you can access SharePoint as a Web folder and then right-click files to select options like "edit profile". Or add files by dragging them in individually or in bulk.

Setting the security is also important, using NT accounts, either NT4 or Active Directory (or both in mixed mode) you can give users access to files/folders the same way as you do in standard Windows. Users can be grouped and the groups given access privileges to help manage this better. Also SharePoint has 3 Roles that a User or Group can be given on a particular item. Readers can see the item (i.e. document/file or folder) but not change it, Authors can see and edit items and coordinators can set security privileges for the part of the system they have control over. Thus, you could set 12 different coordinators for 12 different folder trees, and they could manage who can do what within that area only.

What is SharePoint from a Users Perspective?

From a Users perspective SharePoint is a way of making documents and folders on the Windows platform accessible over the web. The user visits the SharePoint Portal web page, and from there they can add documents, change documents & delete documents. Through this Portal, these documents are now available for discussion, collaboration, versioning and being managed through a workflow. Hence the name "Share-Point". Details about the document can be saved too, such as: who wrote it, when, for whom, its size, and version, category or target audience. These can then be used to find the document through SharePoint's Search facility. Even documents not "in" SharePoint can be included in the search engine's index so they become part of the portal. All in all, it's a great way to get stuff up on the web for users with average technical skills, and for administrators to manage the content.

What are the various Sharepoint 2003 and Exchange integration points?

Link to OutlookThis is a button on contacts or events lists that lets Outlook 2003 add a pst file named Sharepoint Folders and it links to the data on the site. It’s read-only, but you could make the home page for that PST be the Sharepoint site for easier viewing. The link to outlook feature seems more to be where some can public a calendar, but not want too much collaboration. For example, a holiday schedule, company meeting schedule, etc, can be made available for people to be able to view from Outlook without having to go to a web browser. Another nice thing about OL2K3 is that you can compare these calendars with others side by side.

Searching Public Folders

With SPS you can index Exchange’s public folders with the search engine so that all that precious public folder content is searchable. You’ll want to look at content sources and indexing in Sharepoint administration.

Displaying Public Folders in a web part

Since exchange web-enables public folders, you can create a web part that displays that content. IE, http://exchangeserver/Public/IT/Helpdesk will display the IT/Helpdesk public folder via OWA. So you add the Page Viewer web part to a page and point it at that URL. The key here is to add ?cmd=contents to the end of the url if you don’t want the navigator pane on the left.

Smart web parts

Some of the web parts that come with SPS allow you to add a web part to a page that actually takes the users outlook info (calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks) and put them into the page.

Can SharePoint compare two document versions?

"In Word 2003, you can compare documents side by side. Open two documents. Then, from the Window menu of one of them, select the Compare Side By Side command. If you have only two documents open, the command will automatically choose to compare them. If you have three or more documents open, you'll have to select which document to compare with the current file.

A floating toolbar with two buttons will open. If the button on the left is selected, Word will scroll both documents at the same time. Press the button on the right side of the toolbar to return to where the cursor was located when you started comparing."

What are the integration differences between SPS 2003 and the various Office versions?

SPS webpage can detect you have installed the Office 2003 and run local dll to implement some SPS function, e.g. multi-file upload only works when you have office 2003 installed.

Integration with Office XP is gone.

You will get guys telling you that you can integrate with SPSv2 if you install a backwards compatible document library - but that’s really just putting a bit of SPS 2001 on the server.

Believe me, check-in, check-out, which are themselves very basic, are not available from inside Office XP, or even from the context menu in Windows Explorer.

The ONLY option you have is to use the web interface to check-in or check-out.

What is Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server?SharePoint Portal Server is a portal server that connects people, teams, and knowledge across business processes. SharePoint Portal Server integrates information from various systems into one secure solution through single sign-on and enterprise application integration capabilities. It provides flexible deployment and management tools, and facilitates end-to-end collaboration through data aggregation, organization, and searching. SharePoint Portal Server also enables users to quickly find relevant information through customization and personalization of portal content and layout as well as through audience targeting.

What is Microsoft Windows Services?Microsoft Windows Services is the engine that allows administrators to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration. Windows SharePoint Services provides additional functionality to the Microsoft Office System and other desktop applications, as well as serving as a plat form for application development. SharePoint sites provide communities for team collaboration, enabling users to work together on documents, tasks, and projects. The environment for easy and flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes—facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization.

Who is Office SharePoint Server 2007 designed for?Office SharePoint Server 2007 can be used by information workers, IT administrators, and application developers.

What are the main benefits of Office SharePoint Server 2007?Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a single integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

* Business users gain greater control over the storage, security, distribution, and management of their electronic content, with tools that are easy to use and tightly integrated into familiar, everyday applications. * Organizations can accelerate shared business processes with customers and partners across organizational boundaries using InfoPath Forms Services–driven solutions. * Information workers can find information and people efficiently and easily through the facilitated information-sharing functionality and simplified content publishing. In addition, access to back-end data is achieved easily through a browser, and views into this data can be personalized. * Administrators have powerful tools at their fingertips that ease deployment, management, and system administration, so they can spend more time on strategic tasks. * Developers have a rich platform to build a new class of applications, called Office Business Applications, that combine powerful developer functionality with the flexibility and ease of deployment of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Through the use of out-of-the-box application services, developers can build richer applications with less code.

If you are creating an Internet, or Extranet, facing website, it is recommended that you use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for Internet sites which does not require the purchase client access licenses. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition can only be used for Internet facing websites and all content, information, and applications must be accessible to non-employees. Websites hosted using an “Internet sites” edition cannot be accessed by employees creating, sharing, or collaborating on content which is solely for internal use only, such as an Intranet Portal scenario. See the previous section on licensing for more information on the usage scenarios.

Features such as the document panel and the ability to publish to Excel Services will only be enabled when using Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007or Office Enterprise 2007.

Excel Services will only work with documents saved in the new Office Excel 2007 file format (XLSX).

How do I invite users to join a Windows SharePoint Services Site? Is the site secure?SharePoint-based Web sites can be password-protected to restrict access to registered users, who are invited to join via e-mail. In addition, the site administrator can restrict certain members’ roles by assigning different permission levels to view post and edit.

Can I post any kind of document?You can post documents in many formats, including .pdf, .htm and .doc. In addition, if you are using Microsoft Office XP, you can save documents directly to your Windows SharePoint Services site.

Can I download information directly from a SharePoint site to a personal digital assistant (PDA)?No you cannot. However, you can exchange contact information lists with Microsoft Outlook.

How long does it take to set up the initial team Web site?It only takes a few minutes to create a complete Web site. Preformatted forms let you and your team members contribute to the site by filling out lists. Standard forms include announcements, events, contacts, tasks, surveys, discussions and links.

Can I create custom templates?Yes you can. You can have templates for business plans, doctor’s office, lawyer’s office etc.

How can I make my site public? By default, all sites are created private.If you want your site to be a public Web site, enable anonymous access for the entire site. Then you can give out your URL to anybody in your business card, e-mail or any other marketing material. The URL for your Web site will be: http:// yoursitename.wss.bcentral.com

Hence, please take special care to name your site. These Web sites are ideal for information and knowledge intensive sites and/or sites where you need to have shared Web workspace. Remember: Under each parent Web site, you can create up to 10 sub-sites each with unique permissions, settings and security rights.

How do the sub sites work?You can create a sub site for various categories. For example:

You can keep track of permissions for each team separately so that access is restricted while maintaining global access to the parent site.

How do I make my site non-restricted?If you want your site to have anonymous access enabled (i.e., you want to treat it like any site on the Internet that does not ask you to provide a user name and password to see the content of the site), follow these simple steps:

1. Login as an administrator 2. Click on site settings 3. Click on Go to Site Administration 4. Click on Manage anonymous access 5. Choose one of the three conditions on what Anonymous users can access:

* o Entire Web site o Lists and libraries o Nothing

Default condition is nothing; your site has restricted access. The default conditions allow you to create a secure site for your Web site.

Can I get domain name for my Web site?Unfortunately, no. At this point, we don’t offer domain names for SharePoint sites. But very soon we will be making this available for all our SharePoint site customers. Please keep checking this page for further update on this. Meanwhile, we suggest you go ahead and set up your site and create content for it.

What are picture libraries?Picture libraries allow you to access a photo album and view it as a slide show or thumbnails or a film strip. You can have separate folder for each event, category, etc

What are the advantages of a hosted SharePoint vs. one that is on an in-house server? * No hardware investment, i.e. lower costs * No software to download - ready to start from the word go * No IT resources - Anyone who has used a Web program like Hotmail can use it * Faster deployment

Can I ask users outside of my organization to participate in my Windows SharePoint Services site?Yes. You can manage this process using the Administration Site Settings. Simply add users via their e-mail alias and assign permissions such as Reader or Contributor.

Are there any IT requirements or downloads required to set up my SharePoint site?No. You do not need to download any code or plan for any IT support. Simply complete the on-line signup process and provide us your current and correct email address. Once you have successfully signed up and your site has been provisioned, we will send a confirmation to the email address you provided.

I am located outside of the United States. Are there any restrictions or requirements for accessing the Windows SharePoint Services?No. There are no system or bandwidth limitations for international trial users. Additionally language packs have been installed which allow users to set up sub-webs in languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish.

Are there any browser recommendations?Yes. Microsoft recommends using the following browsers for viewing and editing Windows SharePoint Services sites: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.

What security levels are assigned to users?Security levels are assigned by the administrator who is adding the user. There are four levels by default and additional levels can be composed as necessary.

* Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site. * Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists. * Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site. * Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.

How secure are Windows SharePoint Services sites hosted by Microsoft?Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Technical security measures provide firewall protection, intrusion detection, and web-publishing rules. The Microsoft operation center team tests and deploys software updates in order to maintain the highest level of security and software reliability. Software hot-fixes and service packs are tested and deployed based on their priority and level of risk. Security related hot-fixes are rapidly deployed into the environment to address current threats. A comprehensive software validation activity ensures software stability through regression testing prior to deployment.

What is the difference between an Internet and an intranet site?An internet site is a normal site that anyone on the internet can access (e.g., www.msn.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.). You can set up a site for your company that can be accessed by anyone without any user name and password. The internet is used for public presence and a primary marketing tool managed typically by web programmers and a system administrator.

An intranet (or internal network), though hosted on a Web site, can only be accessed by people who are members of a specific network. They need to have a login and password that was assigned to them when they were added to the site by the site administrator. The intranet is commonly used as an internal tool for giving employees access to company information. Content is driven by business relevance, business rules and has increasingly become a common tool in larger organizations. An intranet is becoming more and more the preferred method for employees to interact with each other and the central departments in an organization, whether or not the organization has a Web presence.

What is a workspace?A site or workspace is when you want a new place for collaborating on Web pages, lists and document libraries. For example, you might create a site to manage a new team or project, collaborate on a document or prepare for a meeting.

What are the various kinds of roles the users can have?A user can be assigned one of the following roles

* Reader - Has read-only access to the Web site. * Contributor - Can add content to existing document libraries and lists. * Web Designer - Can create lists and document libraries and customize pages in the Web site. * Administrator - Has full control of the Web site.

Can more than one person use the same login?If the users sharing that login will have the same permissions and there is no fear of them sharing a password, then yes. Otherwise, this is discouraged.

How customizable is the user-to-user access?User permissions apply to an entire Web, not to documents themselves. However, you can have additional sub webs that can optionally have their own permissions. Each user can be given any of four default roles. Additional roles can be defined by the administrator.

Can each user have access to their own calendar?Yes there are two ways to do this,

* by creating a calendar for each user, or * by creating a calendar with a view for each user

How many files can I upload?There is no restriction in place except that any storage consumed beyond that provided by the base offering may have an additional monthly charge associated with them.

What types of files can I upload / post to the site?The only files restricted are those ending with the following extensions: .asa, .asp, .ida, .idc, .idq. Microsoft reserves the right to add additional file types to this listing at any time. Also, no content that violates the terms of service may be uploaded or posted to the site.

Can SharePoint be linked to an external data source?SharePoint data can be opened with Access and Excel as an external data source. Thus, SharePoint can be referenced as an external data source. SharePoint itself cannot reference an external data source.

Can SharePoint be linked to a SQL database?SharePoint 2007 Portal Server (MOSS2K7) allows connections to SQL based datasources via the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC also allows connecting to data via Web Services.

Can I customize my Windows SharePoint Services site?YES! Windows SharePoint Services makes updating sites and their content from the browser easier then ever.

To fully customize your site, you can use Microsoft FrontPage 2003. Specifically, you can use FrontPage themes and shared borders, and also use FrontPage to create photo galleries and top ten lists, utilize standard usage reports, and integrate automatic Web content.

Find and share information more simply. Find information and expertise wherever they are located. Share knowledge and simplify working with others within and across organizational boundaries.

Empower IT to make a strategic impact. Increase responsiveness of IT to business needs and reduce the number of platforms that have to be maintained by supporting all the intranet, extranet, and Web applications across the enterprise with one integrated platform.

What are the features that the portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include?The portal components of Office SharePoint Server 2007 include features that are especially useful for designing, deploying, and managing enterprise intranet portals, corporate Internet Web sites, and divisional portal sites. The portal components make it easier to connect to people within the organization who have the right skills, knowledge, and project experience.

Does a SharePoint Web site include search functionality?Yes. SharePoint Team Services provides a powerful text-based search feature that helps you find documents and information fast.

Write the features of the search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007?The search component of Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been significantly enhanced by this release of SharePoint Products and Technologies. New features provide:

* A consistent and familiar search experience. * Increased relevance of search results. * New functions to search for people and expertise. * Ability to index and search data in line-of-business applications and * Improved manageability and extensibility.

What are the benefits of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? * Provide a simple, familiar, and consistent user experience. * Boost employee productivity by simplifying everyday business activities. * Help meet regulatory requirements through comprehensive control over content. * Effectively manage and repurpose content to gain increased business value. * Simplify organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems. * Connect people with information and expertise. * Accelerate shared business processes across organizational boundaries. * Share business data without divulging sensitive information. * Enable people to make better-informed decisions by presenting business-critical information in one central location. * Provide a single, integrated platform to manage intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across the enterprise.

Will SharePoint Portal Server and Team Services ever merge?The products will come together because they are both developed by the Office team.

What does partial trust mean the Web Part developer?If an assembly is installed into the BIN directory, the code must be ensured that provides error handling in the event that required permissions are not available. Otherwise, unhandled security exceptions may cause the Web Part to fail and may affect page rendering on the page where the Web Part appears.

How can I raise the trust level for assemblies installed in the BIN directory?Windows SharePoint Services can use any of the following three options from ASP.NET and the CLR to provide assemblies installed in the BIN directory with sufficient permissions. The following table outlines the implications and requirements for each option.

Option Pros Cons

Increase the trust level for the entire virtual server. For more information, see “Setting the trust level for a virtual server” Easy to implement.

In a development environment, increasing the trust level allows you to test an assembly with increased permissions while allowing you to recompile assemblies directly into the BIN directory without resetting IIS. This option is least secure.

This option affects all assemblies used by the virtual server. There is no guarantee the destination server has the required trust level. Therefore, Web Parts may not work once installed on the destination server.

Create a custom policy file for your assemblies. For more information, see “How do I create a custom policy file?” Recommended approach.

This option is most secure.

An assembly can operate with a unique policy that meets the minimum permission requirements for the assembly.

By creating a custom security policy, you can ensure the destination server can run your Web Parts.

Requires the most configuration of all three options. Install your assemblies in the GAC

Easy to implement. This grants Full trust to your assembly without affecting the trust level of assemblies installed in the BIN directory.

This option is less secure.

Assemblies installed in the GAC are available to all virtual servers and applications on a server running Windows SharePoint Services. This could represent a potential security risk as it potentially grants a higher level of permission to your assembly across a larger scope than necessary

In a development environment, you must reset IIS every time you recompile assemblies.

Licensing issues may arise due to the global availability of your assembly.

Does SharePoint work with NFS?Yes and no. It can crawl documents on an NFS volume, but the sharepoint database or logs cannot be stored there.

How is SharePoint Portal Server different from the Site Server?Site Server has search capabilities but these are more advanced using SharePoint. SPS uses digital dashboard technology which provides a nice interface for creating web parts and showing them on dashboards (pages). SS doesn’t have anything as advanced as that. The biggest difference would be SPS document management features which also integrate with web folders and MS Office.

What would you like to see in the next version of SharePoint?A few suggestions:

1. SPS and STS on same machine 2. Tree view of Categories and Folders 3. General Discussion Web Part 4. Personalization of Dashboards 5. Role Customization 6. Email to say WHY a document has been rejected for Approval 7. More ways to customize the interface 8. Backup and restore an individual Workspaces 9. Filter for Visio 10. Better way to track activity on SPS 11. Ability to Save as from Adobe to space on My Network Places

Why Sharepoint is not a viable solution for enterprise wide deployments?Planning an enterprise deployment using SharePoint features is a very difficult task unless you can establish a Service Oriented Architecture, using AD for managing security with well defined roles based information access(EISA). Sounds reasonable, although it seems difficult to deploy with the tools limitations in document storage.

Document management does not scale beyond a single server, but scales great within a single server. For example, a quad Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM works great for a document management server that has about 900,000 - 1,000,000 document, but if you need to store 50,000,000 document and want to have them all in one single workspace then it does not scale at all. If you need a scenario like this, you need to plan your deployment right and it should scale for you, it just does not right out of the box. If you are using your server as a portal and search server most for the most part it scales great. You can have many different servers crawl content sources and have separate servers searching and serving the content.

If you have < 750,000 documents per server and fewer than 4 content sources and fewer than 50,000 users, SPS should scale just fine for your needs with the proper planning.

What are the actual advantages of SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) over SharePoint Team Services (STS)?SharePoint Portal Services (SPS) has MUCH better document management. It has check-in, check-out, versioning, approval, publishing, subscriptions, categories, etc. STS does not have these features, or they are very scaled back. SharePoint team Services (SPS) has a better search engine, and can crawl multiple content sources. STS cannot. STS is easier to manage and much better for a team environment where there is not much Document Management going on. SPS is better for an organization, or where Document Management is crucial.

How Does SharePoint work?The browser sends a DAV packet to IIS asking to perform a document check in. PKMDASL.DLL, an ISAPI DLL, parses the packet and sees that it has the proprietary INVOKE command. Because of the existence of this command, the packet is passed off to msdmserv.exe, who in turn processes the packet and uses EXOLEDB to access the WSS, perform the operation and send the results back to the user in the form of XML.

How do I open an older version of a document?Normally, all previous versions are located in the shadow, so if you right click a published document from within the web folders, go to properties and then the third tab, versions you can view older versions.

What is SharePoint from a Technical Perspective?Technically SharePoint illustrates neatly what Microsoft’s .net strategy is all about: integrating Windows with the Web. Microsoft has previously made accessing stuff on a PC easier, (Windows) then on a network (NT) and now on the web (.NET). SharePoint is an application written to let a user access a web accessible directory tree called the Web Storage System.

SharePoint was written with a set of technologies that allow the programmer to pass data, functions, parameters over HTTP, the web’s medium. These are XML, XSL and SOAP, to name a few I understand the basics of!

To the user it looks easy, like Hotmail, but every time they click a button or a link, a lot has to happen behind the scenes to do what they want to do quickly and powerfully. Not as easy as you might think, but SharePoint does it for you. Accessing this Web storage system and the server itself is also done using technologies like ADO, CDO, PKMCDO, LDAP, DDSC, ADSC. More on these later. SharePoint is a great example of how the Internet Platform can be extended and integrated into an existing well adopted technology, Windows.

What is SharePoint from an Administration Perspective?Administering SharePoint mainly consists of setting it up, which is much easier than you expect, adding the content, which can be just dragging and dropping in whole directory structures and files, and then organizing the files better by giving them categories or other metadata. This is done either through the Web interface or through the SharePoint Client: a program what means you can access SharePoint as a Web folder and then right-click files to select options like “edit profile”. Or add files by dragging them in individually or in bulk.

Setting the security is also important, using NT accounts, either NT4 or Active Directory (or both in mixed mode) you can give users access to files/folders the same way as you do in standard Windows. Users can be grouped and the groups given access privileges to help manage this better. Also SharePoint has 3 Roles that a User or Group can be given on a particular item. Readers can see the item (i.e. document/file or folder) but not change it, Authors can see and edit items and coordinators can set security privileges for the part of the system they have control over. Thus, you could set 12 different coordinators for 12 different folder trees, and they could manage who can do what within that area only.

What is SharePoint from a Users Perspective?From a Users perspective SharePoint is a way of making documents and folders on the Windows platform accessible over the web. The user visits the SharePoint Portal web page, and from there they can add documents, change documents & delete documents. Through this Portal, these documents are now available for discussion, collaboration, versioning and being managed through a workflow. Hence the name “Share-Point”. Details about the document can be saved too, such as: who wrote it, when, for whom, its size, and version, category or target audience. These can then be used to find the document through SharePoint’s Search facility. Even documents not “in” SharePoint can be included in the search engine’s index so they become part of the portal. All in all, it’s a great way to get stuff up on the web for users with average technical skills, and for administrators to manage the content.

What are the various Sharepoint 2003 and Exchange integration points?Link to Outlook

This is a button on contacts or events lists that lets Outlook 2003 add a pst file named Sharepoint Folders and it links to the data on the site. It’s read-only, but you could make the home page for that PST be the Sharepoint site for easier viewing. The link to outlook feature seems more to be where some can public a calendar, but not want too much collaboration. For example, a holiday schedule, company meeting schedule, etc, can be made available for people to be able to view from Outlook without having to go to a web browser. Another nice thing about OL2K3 is that you can compare these calendars with others side by side.

Searching Public Folders

With SPS you can index Exchange’s public folders with the search engine so that all that precious public folder content is searchable. You’ll want to look at content sources and indexing in Sharepoint administration.

Displaying Public Folders in a web part

Since exchange web-enables public folders, you can create a web part that displays that content. IE, http://exchangeserver/Public/IT/Helpdesk will display the IT/Helpdesk public folder via OWA. So you add the Page Viewer web part to a page and point it at that URL. The key here is to add ?cmd=contents to the end of the url if you don’t want the navigator pane on the left.

Smart web parts

Some of the web parts that come with SPS allow you to add a web part to a page that actually takes the users outlook info (calendar, inbox, contacts, tasks) and put them into the page.

The SmartPart Web Part project template for Visual Studio allows developers to create quickly a project which contains the base infrastructure to:

* write a web user control (ASCX) * wrap the user control in a SmartPart instance * generate a SharePoint Solution file (WSP) for easy deployment * generate a setup package for a wizard driven installation

Can SharePoint compare two document versions?“In Word 2003, you can compare documents side by side. Open two documents. Then, from the Window menu of one of them, select the Compare Side By Side command. If you have only two documents open, the command will automatically choose to compare them. If you have three or more documents open, you’ll have to select which document to compare with the current file.

A floating toolbar with two buttons will open. If the button on the left is selected, Word will scroll both documents at the same time. Press the button on the right side of the toolbar to return to where the cursor was located when you started comparing.”

What are the integration differences between SPS 2003 and the various Office versions?SPS webpage can detect you have installed the Office 2003 and run local dll to implement some SPS function, e.g. multi-file upload only works when you have office 2003 installed.

Integration with Office XP is gone.

You will get guys telling you that you can integrate with SPSv2 if you install a backwards compatible document library - but that’s really just putting a bit of SPS 2001 on the server.

Believe me, check-in, check-out, which are themselves very basic, are not available from inside Office XP, or even from the context menu in Windows Explorer.

The ONLY option you have is to use the web interface to check-in or check-out.

• What is the relationship between Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and Microsoft Windows Services?Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (including SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services) deliver highly scalable collaboration solutions with flexible deployment and management tools. Windows SharePoint Services provides sites for team collaboration, while Share Point Portal Server connects these sites, people, and business processes-facilitating knowledge sharing and smart organizations. SharePoint Portal Server also extends the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services by providing organizational and management tools for SharePoint sites, and by enabling teams to publish information to the entire organization.

• What is a SharePoint Feature? What files are used to define a feature?A SharePoint Feature is a functional component that can be activated and deactivate at various scopes throughout a SharePoint instances, scope of which are defined as1. Farm level 2. Web Application level 3. Site level 4. Web levelFeatures have their own receiver architecture, which allow you to trap events such as when a feature isInstalling, Uninstalling, Activated, or Deactivated.

The two files that are used to define a feature are the feature.xml and manifest file(elements.xml). The feature XML file defines the actual feature and will make SharePoint aware of the installed feature. The manifest file contains details about the feature such as functionality.

• Workflow can be applied to what all elements of SharePoint ?Workflow associations are often created directly on lists and libraries, a workflow association can also be created on a content type that exists within the Content Type Gallery for the current site or content types defined within a list. In short, it can be applied ...At the level of a list/libraryAt the level of a content type defined at site scopeAt the level of a content type defined at list scope

• What are the types of input forms that can be created for a workflow ?You can create four different types of input forms including1. An association form2. An initiation form3. A modification form4. A task edit form.

Note that these forms are optional when you create a workflow template.

• What are ways to create input forms for workflow ?Two1. You can create your forms by using custom application pages, which are standard .aspx pages deployed to run out of the _layouts directory. ( disadv: lot of code required when compared to Infopath approach)2. Using Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 (disadv: picks up a dependenct on MOSS, i.e. it cannot run in a standalone WSS environment)

• What is the difference between method activity and event activity in WorkFlow ?A method activity is one that performs an action, such as creating or updating a task. An event activity is one that runs in response to an action occurring.

• What are content types?A content type is a flexible and reusable WSS type definition (or we can a template) that defines the columns and behavior for an item in a list or a document in a document library. For example, you can create a content type for a leave approval document with a unique set of columns, an event handler, and its own document template and attach it with a document library/libraries.• Can a content type have receivers associated with it?Yes, a content type can have an event receiver associated with it, either inheriting from the SPListEventReciever base class for list level events, or inheriting from the SPItemEventReciever base class. Whenever the content type is instantiated, it will be subject to the event receivers that are associated with it.

• What two files are typically (this is kept generally) included when developing a content type, and what is the purpose of each?There is generally the main content type file that holds things like the content type ID, name, group, description, and version. There is also the ContentType.Fields file which contains the fields to include in the content type that has the ID, Type, Name, DisplayName, StaticName, Hidden, Required, and Sealed elements. They are related by the FieldRefs element in the main content type file.

• What is an ancestral type and what does it have to do with content types?An ancestral type is the base type that the content type is deriving from, such as Document (0x0101). The ancestral type will define the metadata fields that are included with the custom content type.

• Can a list definition be derived from a custom content type?Yes, a list definition can derive from a content type which can be seen in the schema.XML of the list definition in the element.

• When creating a list definition, how can you create an instance of the list?You can create a new instance of a list by creating an instance.XML file

• What is a Field Control?Field controls are simple ASP.NET 2.0 server controls that provide the basic field functionality of SharePoint. They provide basic general functionality such as displaying or editing list data as it appears on SharePoint list pages.

• What base class do custom Field Controls inherit from?This varies. Generally, custom field controls inherit from the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BaseFieldControl namespace, but you can inherit from the default field controls.

• Can multiple SharePoint installs point to the same DB?Multiple SharePoint installs can use the same database server. Not literally the same database on that server. That server must be SQL Server 2000 or SQL Server 2005. It cannot be Oracle or another vendor.

• How to create links to the mapped network drives?Creating links to mapped drives in WSS v3 or MOSS 2007 can be done viathe new content type for .lnk files.

• While creating a Web part, which is the ideal location to Initialize my new controls?Override the CreateChildControls method to include your new controls. You can control the exact rendering of your controls by calling the .Render method in the web parts Render method.

• What are the two base classes a WebPart you are going to use within SharePoint 2007 can inherit from?There are two base classes that a WebPart which is going to be consumed by SharePoint can inherit from, either theSharePoint WebPart Base classor theASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class.When inheriting from the SharePoint WebPart Base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart. When inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart base class your derived WebPart class will inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart. It is considered good practice to use the ASP.NET WebPart base class since the old base class is meant for backwards compatibility with previous version of SharePoint, however there are four exception when it is better to leverage functionality from the SharePoint WebPart base class:Cross page connectionsConnections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zoneClient-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)Data caching infrastructure

• What are the differences between the two base classes and what are the inherit benefits of using one over another?The difference is the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.WebPart base class is meant for backward compatibility with previous versions of SharePoint. The benefit of using the SharePoint WebPart base class is it supported:Cross page connectionsConnections between Web Parts that are outside of a Web Part zoneClient-side connections (Web Part Page Services Component)Data caching infrastructureASP.NET 2.0 WebParts are generally considered better to use because SharePoint is built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 web architecture. Inheriting from the ASP.NET 2.0 base class offers you features that inherit to ASP.NET 2.0, such as embedding resources as opposed to use ClassResources for deployment of said types.

• What is the WebPartManager sealed class? What is its purpose?The WebPartManager sealed class is responsible for managing everything occurring on a WebPart page, such as the WebParts (controls), events, and misc. functionality that will occur in WebPartZones. For example, the WebPartManager is responsible for the functionality that is provided when you are working with moving a WebPart from WebPartZone to WebPartZone. It is known as the “the central class of the Web Part Control Set.”

• What does AllowUnsafeUpdates do ?If your code modifies Windows SharePoint Services data in some way, you may need to allow unsafe updates on the Web site, without requiring a security validation. You can do by setting the AllowUnsafeUpdates property.

• What does RunWithElevatedPrivileges do?There are certain object model calls model that require site-administration privileges. To bypass access-denied error, we use RunWithElevatedPrivileges property when request is initiated by a nonprivileged user. We can successfully make calls into the object model by calling the RunWithElevatedPrivileges method provided by the SPSecurity class.• What does SPWeb.EnsureUser method do?Checks whether the specified login name belongs to a valid user of the Web site, and if the login name does not already exist, adds it to the Web site.e.g SPUser usr = myWeb.EnsureUser("hitenders");

• What is a SPSite and SPWeb object, and what is the difference between each of the objects?The SPSite object represents a collection of sites (site collection [a top level site and all its subsites]). The SPWeb object represents an instance SharePoint Web, and SPWeb object contains things like the actual content. A SPSite object contains the various subsites and the information regarding them.

• What does a SPWebApplication object represent?The SPWebApplication objects represents a SharePoint Web Application, which essentially is an IIS virtual server. Using the class you can instigate high level operations, such as getting all the features of an entire Web Application instance, or doing high level creation operations like creating new Web Applications through code.

• Would you use SPWebApplication to get information like the SMTP address of the SharePoint site?Yes, since this is a Web Application level setting. You would iterate through each SPWebApplication in the SPWebApplication collection, and then use the appropriate property calls (OutboundMailServiceInstance) in order to return settings regarding the mail service such as the SMTP address.

• How do you return SharePoint List items using SharePoint web services?In order to retrieve list items from a SharePoint list through Web Services, you should use the lists.asmx web service by establishing a web reference in Visual Studio. The lists.asmx exposes the GetListItems method, which will allow the return of the full content of the list in an XML node. It will take parameters like the GUID of the name of the list you are querying against, the GUID of the view you are going to query, etc.Side Question: I got asked how I built queries with the lists.asmx web service. In order to build queries with this service, one of the parameters that the GetListItems method exposes is the option to build a CAML query. There are other ways to do this as well, but that was how I answered it.

• When retrieving List items using SharePoint Web Services, how do you specify explicit credentials to be passed to access the list items?In order to specify explicit credentials with a Web Service, you generally instantiate the web service, and then using the credentials properties of the Web Service object you use the System.Net.NetworkCredential class to specify the username, password, and domain that you wish to pass when making the web service call and operations.

• What is CAML, and why would you use it?CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. CAML is an XML based language which provides data constructs that build up the SharePoint fields, view, and is used for table definition during site provisioning. CAML is responsible for rending data and the resulting HTML that is output to the user in SharePoint. CAML can be used for a variety of circumstances, overall is used to query, build and customize SharePoint based sites. A general use would be building a CAML query in a SharePoint WebPart in order to retrieve values from a SharePoint list.

• What is impersonation, and when would you use impersonation?Impersonation can basically provide the functionality of executing something in the context of a different identity, for example assigning an account to users with anonymous access. You would use impersonation in order to access resources on behalf of the user with a different account, that normally, that wouldn’t be able to access or execute something.

• What are WebPart properties, and what are some of the attributes you see when declaring WebPart properties in code?WebPart properties are just like ASP.NET control properties, they are used to interact with and specify attributes that should be applied to a WebPart by a user. Some of the attributes you see with ASP.NET 2.0 properties are WebDescription, WebDisplayName, Category, Personalizable, and WebBrowsable. Although most of these properties come from the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts class, ones like Category come out of System.ComponentModel namespace.

• Why are properties important in WebPart development, and how have you exploited them in past development projects? What must each custom property have?Properties are important because WebParts allow levels of personalization for each user. WebPart properties make it possible for a user to interact, adjust, and increase overall experience value with the programmatic assets that you develop without having the need to use an external editor or right any code. A very simple example of exploiting a property would be something like allowing the user to change the text on the WebPart design interface so that they can display whatever string of text they desire.Each custom property that you have must have the appropriate get and set accessor methods.

• What are ClassResources? How do you reference and deploy resources with an ASP.NET 2.0 WebPart?ClassResources are used when inheriting from the SharePoint.WebPart.WebPartPages.WebPart base class, and are defined in the SharePoint solution file as things that should be stored in the wpresources directory on the server. It is a helpful directory to use in order to deploy custom images. In ASP.NET 2.0, typically things such as images are referenced by embedding them as resources within an assembly. The good part about ClassResources is they can help to eliminate recompiles to change small interface adjustments or alterations to external JavaScript files.

• What is a SharePoint Solution File? How does it differ from WebPart .cab files in legacy development? What does it contain?A SharePoint solution file is essentially a .cabinet file with all a developers ustom componets suffixed with a .wsp extension that aids in deployment. The big difference with SharePoint solution files is is that a solution:allows deployment to all WFE’s in a farmis highly manageable from the interface allowing deployment, retraction, and versioningCan package all types of assets like site definitions, feature definitions (and associated components), Webparts, etc.Can provide Code Access Security provisioning to avoid GAC deploymentsAnd much more..

• What is a .ddf file and what does it have to do with SharePoint Solution creation?A .ddf file is a data directive file and is used when building the SharePoint solution bundle specifying the source files and their destination locations. The important thing for someone to understand is that the .ddf file will be passed as a parameter to the MAKECAB utility to orchestrate construction of the SharePoint solution file.

• What file does a SharePoint solution package use to orchestrate (describe) its packaged contents?The solution Manifest.XML file.

• What deployment mechanism can you use to instigate Code Access Security attributes for your WebParts?SharePoint solution files can add in order to handle code access security deployment issues. This is done in the element in the SharePoint solution manifest.XML, which makes it easier to get assemblies the appropriate permissions in order to operate in the bin directory of the web application.

• What are event receivers?Event receivers are classes that inherit from the SpItemEventReciever or SPListEventReciever base class (both of which derive out of the abstract base class SPEventRecieverBase), and provide the option of responding to events as they occur within SharePoint, such as adding an item or deleting an item.

• When would you use an event receiver?Since event receivers respond to events, you could use a receiver for something as simple as canceling an action, such as deleting a document library by using the Cancel property. This would essentially prevent users from deleting any documents if you wanted to maintain retention of stored data.

• What base class do event receivers inherit from?Event receivers either inherit from the SPListEventReciever base class or the SPItemEventReciever base class, both which derive from the abstract base class SPEventReceiverBase.

• If I wanted to not allow people to delete documents from a document library, how would I go about it?You would on the ItemDeleting event set: properties.Cancel= true.

• What is the difference between an asynchronous and synchronous event receivers?An asynchronous event occurs after an action has taken place, and a synchronous event occurs before an action has take place. For example, an asynchronous event is ItemAdded, and its sister synchronous event is ItemAdding

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The opinions expressed on this blog are the personal views of SharePointKings, and do not represent or reflect the viewpoints or policies of any past, present, or future employer, colleague, or customer, or any other entity. The posts on this blog are provided ‘as is’ with no warranties, express or implied, and confer no rights. Use of information contained within this blog, including specific technical steps mentioned herein, is at your own risk. References to specific software products, processes, resources, or companies do not imply any endorsement.